The Dangerous Idiocy of Glenn Beck

Anyone who's taken a class in logic or has a firm grasp on the reasoning process can see, after five minutes of watching Glenn Beck, that he has no fucking clue how to construct an argument. It's a shame, considering that arguing his "case" is his very profession. Worse still that millions of people follow his flawed lines of reasoning into believing lies.

What's important to follow are not the lines of reasoning, which never really connect in a logical way, but the false conclusions. He's not looking at a problem and following reason to conclusions; he's coming up with conclusions and fashioning a line of associative thought back to the original problem.

It's selectively picking out certain bits of information and ignoring others in order to make the process fit the desired result, much like the way Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration selectively chose certain bits of intelligence in order to make the argument for going to war with Iraq.

Of course, Beck's goal is not to prove his argument. It's to incite dormant prejudicial passions, get the dwindling Republican base riled up and angry at the changes taking place in this country.

The Sunday Times Week in Review section has an article examining the line between political anger and violence. Check out this quote:

The Fox News host Glenn Beck, a galvanizing figure for the Tea Party protesters, might have offered the most inventive explanation for the isolated instances of violence when he said on his radio program that the Democrats were inciting protesters by walking through their ranks on the way to the Capitol. "I can guarantee you they walked out and said,'What the hell do you have to do to these people to get them to kill us?' I swear to you!"

Breaking that statement down here would be a waste of time. Besides, Jon Stewart does a much better job of lampooing Beck in the clip below. But take a hard look at conclusion Beck is trying to convey: should someone murder a Democrat Congressman, it would be ok because the Democrats are essentially asking for it.

That's the conclusion. There's no argument at all. The phrase "I can guarantee you," we all know, is usually stated by someone trying to prove a proposition without a shred of proof, while "I swear to you" is what you hear from used car dealers unwilling to extend a guarantee.

Below is one of the funniest stand-up impersonations Stewart has done on the Daily Show. Anyone who hasn't seen Glenn Beck can learn all they need to know from the clip.

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To be fair, even FixNews anchors can't help but mock Beck:

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Wade Redden Needs to Go, and Other Complaints About the Rangers

Yes, the Rangers beat the Devils last night in exciting fashion, tying the game with 17 seconds left and winning in a shootoout, keeping their playoff hopes alive. But even if they make the playoffs there is little evidence they can beat anybody but the Devils. When the season is over the Rangers are going to have to look long and hard at their personnel and make some moves to improve the team. It's not too late this season, however, to set some changes in motion.

Defense

The real issue on this team is not the lack of scoring by forwards, but the overall play of the defenseman. Stahl and Girardi have been solid all season. They don't score a lot of points (24 for Stahl, 21 for Girardi) but they know how to move the puck in the offensive zone, when to pinch in, and how to get the puck to the front of the net. And they are the two best defensive stoppers the Rangers have, always out there against the opposition's top line.

Last season I seriously considered constructing an effigy of Michal Rozsival and burning it at a stake of hockey sticks right outside the Nathan's on the corner of 32nd and 7th avenue, across from the Garden. It seemed that every third game he would shit the bed and make some bonehead play that cost the Rangers a win. This season he still makes a bad play here or there, has a game where he's a moment late in recognizing plays and pucks bounce past him while manning the point, but overall his play and effort have been much more tolerable. In fact, there are games when he looks like an above average player, when you see why the front office gave him a 4-year $20 million contract. Well, maybe I shouldn't go that far.

Michael Del Zotto, despite his offensive and passing skill, has a -22 plus/minus this season, the worst on the team. Considering he gets a lot of power play time, this is particularly bad. However, the kid's a rookie, has showed enormous offensive potential, and he always plays hard, even if he has seemed to tire and become mistake-prone of late. Along with Matt Gilroy, who has had a quietly solid season (plus/minus of 0), Del Zotto can only get better.

Wade Redden, on the other hand, has no excuses. He needs to be benched to set an example. Normally I think it's counter-productive to bench a guy after he makes a bad play or takes an idiotic penalty, as Tortorella has done is this season with Avery, Del Zotto, Lisin, Voros, Kotalik, and Rozsival. But nothing else has worked with Redden, so I say sit him down for a while.

After all, a player with Redden's salary ($8 million a year, when all is said and done, 2nd highest on the team) is expected to be a top performer.

From 2001-2009, Redden averaged about sixty points a season. This season? Fourteen. He has the worst shooting percentage on the team, and is 606th in the league in that category. That's right, 606th. Rarely does he manage to get the puck to the net; invariably his shots are blocked by an opponent long before they come close to opposing goaltenders. Two goals and twelve assists out of the second highest paid player on the team is an abomination of Carl Pavano proportions.

The fact that he struggles to get pucks to the net is indicative of a larger problem with Redden: he never seems to exert any extra effort; he plays the game as if he were going through the motions, just to receive that undeservedly large paycheck. Not only does he not score, he doesn't block shots, he doesn't skate hard, and he never puts big hits on opposing players. A hockey fan seeing the Rangers for the first time would watch a game and assume that Redden was nothing but a mediocre fill-in occupying a spot because someone better was injured. He does just enough to get by, and nothing more. The Rangers should do whatever they can to drop Redden and give his money to Callahan, Anisimov, who not only play better defensively, but actually contribute to the offense. The problem, of course, is that no team is going to want to pick up Redden at his unbelievable salary. $6.5 million of cap space for 15 points a season? No, thank you.

Last night, Ilya Kovalchuk of the Devils scored the first goal of the game off a rebound that landed directly on Redden's stick. Redden first failed to cover Kovalchuk as he entered the zone (there was no one else for Redden to cover), then let him steal the puck right off his stick five feet from the net.

In the second period another Devil stole the puck off his stick right in front of the net, though Lundquist was able to stop that attempt. Then in the third period, the Devils scored their third goal because Redden was too slow to come off the bench on a line change. As Jamie Langenbrunner entered the zone along the right wing, Redden came across the ice from the bench and didn't even make an effort to slide or get in Langenbrunner's way; he simply waved his stick in Langenbrunner's general direction from ten feet away like an old man waving a cane at a passing car. I imagine Redden sounded like an elderly invalid as he feebly reached toward the Devil. It looked terrible, as if Redden had already given up.

When you consider that this man is making eight million a year, you begin to understand some of the problems Tortorella has in motivating his players to bring their A game every night. Redden is the most veteran defenseman on the team, he's making the most money, and yet he never displays heart or extra effort. The one time this season he did show some gumption, when he threw off his gloves and fought an opposing player, the Rangers subsequently went on their longest winning streak of the season. It was as if his teammates said to each other, hey, even Redden is starting to care, let's do this....but the effort was short-lived.

Offense

A major problem with the Rangers is that they only have three true right wings, and one of those, Lisin, is frequently a healthy scratch. The other two right wingers, Gaborik and Callahan, are the Rangers best overall players and goal scorers.

I frequently hear broadcast teams state that the Rangers lack centers. The New York Times makes this claim again today. However, look at their roster, and the fact is that they have too many natural centers: Jokkinen, Prospal, Dubinsky, Drury, Anisimov, Christensen, Boyle, are all every day players. That's seven out of twelve available forward spots. Prospal may also be considered a left winger, but he started out the year centering on Gaborik's line.

Maybe balancing out our wings and centerman will help John Tortorella maintain consistent forward lineups throughout the season. The Rangers have not gone three straight games with the same starting lines. They have trouble scoring in one game and the following day the lines have been changed. All this constant moving around has to be hindering the players' ability to gel as a unit.
Tortorella would better serve his players by being less reactionary and allowing his forwards to play with the same line mates for a week or two.

Here's how I would set the forward lines in the short time left this season:

1. Prospal-Dubinsky-Gaborik . Christensen is the more highly skilled puck handler but Dubinsky can protect Gaborik with his bruising play, and he's had the experience of playing with Jagr when he was the Rangers' top goal scorer. Both Dubinsky and Prospal can take face-offs. Doobs started the year on this top line but was moved when his goal total waned. They should go back to this original thought. Dubinsky and Callahan are the future of this team and they really need to have one or the other on the ice as much as possible. 73 goals on this line (Gabby has 36).

2. Christensen-Jokkinen-Callahan

Callahan is a high energy hitter and scorer. Christensen shoots left, can skate with Callahan, and has great hands. Jokkinen is a play-maker who doesn't skate or shoot as hard as he used to, but give him these two and he won't have to. Callahan, currently nursing a hip injury, will fight when he has to. 38 goals on this line.

3. Avery-Anisimov-Drury

Drury and Anisimov are both great defending centers with good hands and better shots. All three can skate and score. Avery is the bruiser here and plays the deep ball threat as Anisimov and Drury defend. There are 35 goals on this line. If anything, this is the line you would have to worry about most, since their combined plus/minus is -16. But this is primarily because both Drury and Anisimov play on the penalty kill.

4. Prust-Boyle-Shelley

Prust and Shelley are both fighters with a head on their shoulders. Prust and Boyle are excellent forecheckers who can keep the puck in the opponents end of the ice and create opportunities for Gabby or Callahan to come in off the bench and score a quick one. This line has a combined plus/minus of +4. They're not scoring goals (6), but they're not giving them up either. If you bring in Lisin for Shelley you make it 12 goals and the plus/minus barely changes (0).

If I were going to make some on the fly changes, it would be along the left wing side of the roster. You could easily move Christensen up to the top line and bring Dubinsky down to the second if you wanted better hands on the top line, or move Avery up to the top and Doobs to the third if you want more scoring on the third line.

Broken Bells on Letterman

James Mercer of the Shins and Danger Mouse have formed a new group, Broken Bells. The album came out yesterday, and is available here.

They performed last night on Letterman.

Not Such a Wonderful Life

Mark Linkous, aka Sparklehorse, commited suicide this weekend. The man had great talent for creating melancholy alt-blues songs that were at the same moment delicate, mysterious and folksy. If you've never heard anything by Sparklehorse imagine the slow melodies of Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star mixing with the reverberating soothe of Portishead, the intimate resignation blues of Tom Waits. The mood is dark, but earnest. Think Sea Changes Beck.

Back in 2002 a friend gave me "It's a Wonderful Life," Sparklehorse's fourth release. I remember finding the album artwork fascinating, in a romantically understated way, and combined with the "lo-fi, decaying, Waitsian-music-box gloom" of the songs, it reminded me of something I could imagine listening to while spending an emotionally raw night in an old Victorian castle, with candles and tapestries and shadows on the move. But I couldn't get into it. The album was too slow for my taste. It's the kind of thing you listen to when depressed and looking to steep yourself further into self-pity.

Even then, however, he had good taste in collaborators: Waits, Nina Persson, and PJ Harvey all sing on the album.

His most recent work, a collaboration with Danger Mouse called "Dark Night of the Soul", has been making its way around the internet for months, though the creators had been in a battle with EMI over its release. "Dark Night" features performances by The Shins, Julian Casablancas, Black Francis, The Flaming Lips, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega, and more, and is now expected to be released this summer.

In 1996, while on tour opening for Radiohead, Linkous got so wasted on booze and anti-depressants that he passed out in an awkward position on top of his legs for fourteen hours; the resulting damage caused him to spend the next six months in a wheelchair. Then this final act was the inevitable culmination of yet another cliched rock n'roll suicide, I guess. Or maybe it was just another lonely man giving up.

In an age where you can remake your life in infinite ways, I can't imagine why all these talented musicians keep killing themselves just as they are on the cusp of musical immortality (see Jeff Buckley, Shannon Hoon, Elliott Smith) but it sucks, and it's stupid. I hate to be so judgmental, but most people go through their entire lives without finding a way to creatively express their vision and pain and yet these men, who had found their outlet, managed to squander their talent, the life given to them, and the millions of admirers who appreciated their work no matter how sad and dark it became. To be fair, Buckley drowned accidentally, and Hoon died of an accidental overdose, but both knew the danger in those final risky leaps they took, and they took them anyway.

If you want to know a little more about Sparklehorse, check out this early article.

Here's the best song off the soon-to-be released"Dark Night of the Soul":

Next is the title track off his 2001 album. Beware: this is one of those choruses that will stick in your head for a few days.

Also, please note that both these videos are fan created. It's the best I could find.

Jim Bunning Feels Under-Appreciated

Cantankerous old coffin-dodger Jim Bunning finally relented late Tuesday night. In the end, he got what he wanted: an amendment to the emergency funding bill that stipulates the bill will not add to the deficit. The cost of this amendment may not be much for Bunning. Yes, Democrats and the press vilified him for five days and made him out to be a dangerously callous old buffoon; and certainly these events will, for the rest of his life, overshadow his distinguished career as a hall-of-fame pitcher. Bunning doesn't care about that crap. When a man's had enough, he's had enough. For years he remained quiet while fellow Republicans expanded the budget and deficit to record proportions and conducted hundred-billion-dollar wars off the books. But he can't take this nonsense anymore.

As a ballplayer Bunning famously had issues with the managerial style of Gene Mauch, his skipper with the Phillies. Mauch liked to call pitches from the dugout during important situations, and this drove Bunning mad. Bunning liked to shake off the catcher and throw the pitch he wanted. While an admirable display of confidence for a young pitcher, this same type of attitude is frowned upon in the Republican party.

The cost of Bunning's stubborness to his party cannot be overstated. Republicans were riding the momentum of special election wins and popular discontent against Democrats and the President, and then Bunning starts ignoring signals and tossing hanging curves to Democratic hitters.

Why Gentle Jim, why do this now?

The short answer is that he has no one to please anymore. After twenty-five years in politics, the road had ended for Bunning. His approval rating had become dismal; his fundraising virtually non-existent; and both the state and national Republican party, including Mitch McConnell, had decided by March 2009 to elbow him out of his Senate seat. This, for a man Time Magazine described so lovingly:

During the [2006] campaign the famously irascible Hall of Fame pitcher had endured repeated questions about his age and even his mental stability, and had stood by while supporters called his opponent limp-wristed. Always prone to outlandish statements, Bunning himself made news when he said his opponent Daniel Mongiardo, then a state senator and now a lieutenant governor expected to run for the seat in 2010, looked like "one of Saddam Hussein's sons." In 2006, TIME named Bunning one of America's worst senators.

In the last week Bunning, in addition to holding up the unemployment bill, has told a fellow Senator "tough shit", bitched on the Senate record about missing a college basketball game (even as he was blocking that unemployment and medicaire bill), and flipped-off a team of ABC reporters who confronted him outside a Senate elevator.

Now groups are putting together petitions to get him kicked out of the hall of fame.

Here's a man whose top three contributor groups are health professionals, the insurance industry, and securities and investment. In other words, health care and wall street. His top individual contributors are Fidelity Investments, NorPAC (a pro-Israel group) and Brown-Forman (a Kentucky-based booze company that owns Jack Daniels). His fundraising dinners must be a real hootenanny.

One of the ironies here is that, per-capita, Kentucky ranks 44th state when it comes to contributing to federal tax revenue. The average Kentuckian contributes $5400 in taxes to the federal government. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the average citizen contributes $14,000. For every dollar that Kentucky contributes to the federal government, it gets back $1.45 in expenditures, making it one of the federal government's biggest beneficiaries. Meanwhile New Jersey gets the least for its money: 55 cents for every dollar it contributes to the federal coffers.

But never mind all that. The bottom line is that Bunning is not running for re-election this year, he feels he's been shunned by his constituents and his party, and he just doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, never has.

Upon election to the Hall of Fame in 1996, Bunning set up the non-profit Bunning Foundation. In the first twelve years, the foundation collected $504,000. Of that total, Bunning took $180,000 in salary. How much went to local (mostly church) charities? $136,000. As the president of the American Institute for Philanthropy put it, that doesn't look good: "The IRS doesn't want people to just set up their weekend hobbies as nonprofit foundations so they can take advantage of the tax-protection rules."

Gentle Jim gives not a fuck. He deserved that money. He was the one signing all those autographs. The pain in his wrist alone was worth at least ten thousand.

It took them 25 years to put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame. This, for a guy who ranked second all-time in strikeouts when he retired in 1971, who threw a no-no against the Red Sox in '58 and a Father's Day perfect game against the lovable loser Mets in '64. It was the first perfect game the National League had seen in 84 years, for crying out loud. A seven-time all-star, 225 wins, it took him twenty-five years to get in the hall. Can you imagine that? What kind of unappreciative idiots do they have voting, anyway?

Perhaps those voters (mainly sportswriters) had his "famously irascible" demeanor in mind. Or maybe Bunning couldn't escape the ghost of 1964.

With eleven games left in the '64 season, the Phillies, with Gene Mauch at the helm and Bunning as the ace, had a 6.5 game lead on the Reds and Cardinals. A week later, after losing seven in a row, they were out of first place for good. The Phillies lost ten out of their last eleven games that year and the Cardinals wound up going to the World Series and beating the Yankees four games to three. Gene Mauch was blamed for overusing Bunning and fellow pitcher Chris Short down the stretch. They wore down and couldn't perform when it counted most.

While Bunning spent that off-season answering questions about his stamina and reliving one of the worst losing streaks in major league history, Cardinals fireballer Bob Gibson (seen below with Joe Torre at spring training in '62) spent his winter enjoying his ring, bonus, and World Series MVP trophy. The next year, it would be Sandy Koufax enjoying those honors. Bunning would never make it to the World Series.

Can it be that Bunning has been angry since 1964?

The resentment will only intensify as his last year in office winds down. What does he have to lose? Come January 2011 he'll take a position on the board of Brown-Forman, sign some baseballs, make appearances at conservative conferences, and spend mornings shooting defenseless animals on his ranch in Kentucky.

Of course, the political life may have one last bitter pill for Bunning to swallow. Though he's given the finger to both friends and enemies, Gentle Jim is now being fashioned into a poster child for both parties to exploit.

For ideological Republicans, he represents that slowly dying breed of fiscal conservative willing to make hard choices and suffer the public's disapproval."The buck$ $top here!" the poster will say, above a photo of Bunning scowling, palm stiff-armed out toward the foreground where a collection of tiny bohemians in suits with bugged-out eyes and hanging tongues carry heaps of green bills labeled "tax dollars".

However, for those Republicans less inclined to be ideological 8 months before coming up for re-election, he is a steaming pile of dog shit they want to avoid at all costs. Anti-incumbent fever permeates the halls of Congress like the flu through a day-care center. No one wants to upset the angry unemployed people who have plenty of time to make it to the polls on election day.

For Democrats he represents the unashamed contempt Republicans have for the less fortunate, specifically the millions affected by job loss and the economic recession. "What does Jim Bunning care about more?" the poster might say. "Struggling Americans or a college basketball game?"

College basketball game, of course. And if you don't like it, Gentle Jim has two words for you: "Tough shit".